Nico’s at Pier 38 – Hawaii 2013

The Aloha Stadium Swap Meet was on our list of things to do while in Oahu, and since it’s only open 3 days a week (Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays), we decided to rent a car and go shopping before our drive up to the North Shore. However, before all of that, we needed some breakfast so we stopped by Nico’s at Pier 38 which is about half way between our hotel and the stadium.

I suppose if you’re looking for seafood, you’re not going to get much fresher unless you’re actually on the fishing boat. The breakfast menu is a little limited but they open at 6:30am and serve breakfast until 10am so you can start out your day pretty early.

The Fish Omelette came with a tremendous amount of fresh ahi folded into the eggs for $8.95. Incidentally, that bag that you can partially see in the picture below was filled with some of the best shrimp chips that we’ve had (see below for more details).

I settled on the Fish and Eggs ($8.95) which comes with 2 eggs and the fish of the day… ahi. Looking back, I probably should have opted for the side of rice instead of the fruit because it would have been easier to soak up the glorious runny yolks that oozed out of the soft poached eggs. The fish was a generous serving and quite fresh.

After our trip to the North Shore, we stopped by Nico’s for dinner and the restaurant was much busier than it was during breakfast. We started with the Popcorn Scallops ($11.95). Hmmm… we must have a thing for “popcorn” food because we ordered popcorn shrimp at The Cheesecake Factory recently.

Our other “pupu” (appetizer) was the Poke Sampler ($13.50) which was definitely fresh and had 4 or 5 different preparations for the raw fish… my favourite was the spicy ahi.

The special for the night was a local fish (‘uku’ or ‘luku’ – I’m not sure which) that was served with a shiitake ginger cream sauce over rice for $21.95. The white flesh was made up of small flakes. They didn’t skimp on the portion size because it was a rather thick fillet.

I decided to order the Fried Ahi Belly ($16.50) with a side of Macaroni Salad ($2.55). There were 3 large portions of deep-fried fatty tuna belly that was topped with a spicy tomato salsa. The tuna belly felt like it just melted in my mouth and was quite rich and luxurious. Despite how filling the ahi belly was, I was glad that I tried the mac salad.

Service was friendly and portion sizes were good.

Now, about that bag of shrimp chips that I mentioned earlier in the post. In the Fish Market, they sell these awesome chips from Ono Giant Shrimp Chips.

We picked up a bag of the Ryz Ranch flavour. Super crispy and super tasty.

Ono is a local company and the chips are made in Hawaii.

If you get a chance to visit Nico’s, do yourself a favour and pick up a couple of bags of these tasty creations and you won’t be disappointed. You might even decide that you want to smuggle a bag in your luggage to bring home with you.

They also sell these at a few other locations… try Google if you’re looking for them or hit up their Facebook page.